(Note: This week's entry in the "Spohn Challenge" is a lighthearted return to the setting of my first book, Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West [pictured above], which is available for purchase at Amazon.)

Sheriff Jess Harper was on his way over to the Flaming Star one Saturday to have some lunch and talk a bit with Wichita Billings when he happened to spy Clem Morrison walking down the middle of the street waring nothing but his boots.

"What the...?" Harper dashed across into the saloon long enough to yank a tablecloth off of one of Wichita's tables, then raced back outside and gave it to Clem. "Cover yourself up, you blamed fool," he ordered. "What in tarnation are you doing wandering around like that for in the first place?"

Clem wrapped the tablecloth around himself as he answered. "Well, Sheriff Harper, I was feeding some of the horses out at the ranch a while ago when Mr. Colby's niece - you know Betty Lynn, that sweet young thing who's visiting from out east? - well, she comes out into the yard and starts making eyes at me."

"Yeah, so?"

"So I asked her if there was anything that she wanted, and she said. 'Yeah, let's you and me go inside the barn and cuddle awhile.' So I let her take me into the barn and we started cuddlin' and kissin', and we was both havin' a mighty fine time."

"I'm sure you were," Sheriff Harper said. "But I still don't understand what that has to do with--"

"I'm getting to that, Sheriff," Clem told him. "So we kept on kissing and a-cuddlin', and after a while things were starting to get a little intense. Next thing I knew, Betty Lynn was takin' off all her clothes and tellin' me that I should too."

Harper's eyes grew wide. "And?"

"And so I started doing just like you asked me. I'd gotten everything off but my boots when all of a sudden Betty Lynn throws herself down on the hay and looks up at me and says, 'Okay, you big cowboy, let's go to town!"

The sheriff winced and put a hand over part of his face. "Don't tell me..." he said in a disbelieving voice.

Clem just shrugged. "Well, I reckon I'm the first one here. Say, you ain't seen Betty Lynn around anywhere, have you?"

About Me

John Allen Small

Tishomingo, Oklahoma

John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996).
Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.)
John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something.
In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems.
He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.